Nothing touches one's soul like music and as a consequence, nothing can sway one's thinking and have an influence on one's worldview like music. This thought passed through my mind as listened to an " oldies, but goldie's" radio station this morning while going through the mail.
Teens today, just like teens in my day, will tell their parents that they just listen to the beat of a song and pay no attention to the lyrics. That was foolishness in my teen years and it is still foolishness today. This morning, a song would come on the radio that I had not heard in years, yet I could sing along with it as if I had just heard it yesterday. This summer, I had the same experience on a mission trip, as teens knew the words to every song that came on the Country and Western station that they insisted we listen to as we drove to and from our job site.
The reason I bring this up is that over the years I have come to realize that the music I listened to in high school and college, just as the music teens are listening to today, presented a false and potentially dangerous worldview. The lyrics seem to carry one basic theme: one can find ultimate joy and fulfillment in life by finding the right romantic love. I can't deny that I came to accept this worldview in my youth much to my sorrow.
I learned through hard experience that nothing could be further from the truth, and I believe that it is this view that has contributed to a breakdown in the family and hence an erosion of our culture that can be traced to that breakdown. Americans, with a false idea of love promoted by the culture, particularly popular music, are marrying with the expectation that their new spouses meet their every emotional need. This is the secular expectation of "love". The fact, though, is that if we love a human being and do not love God, we end up demanding perfection in that human being, and when we do not get it, we usually become cruel and vindictive. We are demanding something which no human can possibly give and without God, we have no source to fill the longing of our soul.
Shortly after they were married, someone asked Ruth Graham if Billy made her happy. Her reply that it was not Billy's job to make her happy was very instructive. Ruth said that while she did find happiness in being married to him, she would never put the demand on Billy to be the sole source of her happiness. Ruth was a smart woman.
St. Augustine, at the start of his Confessions said, "God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you." God has put a longing within the heart of man that only He can satisfy no matter what the musicians say. Only a relationship with Him can be the source of true joy and happiness. We would be best served to remember that, enjoy the music, but listen to it with a discerning ear. That is loving God with all of your mind.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Loving God With Your Mind
I recently had the blessing of spending two weeks with teenagers at the Fairfield (SC) and Lake Murray (SC) Salkehatchie camps. I came away, as I always do, mightily impressed with this generation's ability to rise to a challenge.
Salkehatchie is a statewide summer service program that locates in various communities throughout the state of South Carolina for the purpose of improving the material lives of the poorest among us.
But there is also a tremendous spiritual aspect to the mission in that those who participate are there to bring the love of Christ to the home owners in a visible and verbal manner and the program is designed to impress upon the teens what it means to take one's Christianity seriously in becoming a true disciple of Christ.
In the nightly worship service at the Fairfield camp, the talks this year centered around the theme that "Christianity is simple, but is isn't easy" and at the Lake Murray camp, around the theme what it means to love God. Both camps used Mark 12:30, "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.", as their primary Scripture.
What troubles me about the next generation is that we are not training them to love God " with all of their mind". In one sense we have reduced Christianity to being just an emotional experience, and I, for one, think so-called contemporary worship has played a large part in this. We are not teaching our children that there is an intellectual base to not only Christianity, but to love.
While there is an emotional base to love, true love cannot be based solely on emotion. If emotion is the only component, then love will ebb and flow and eventually die. We can see this in the high divorce rate within the country as people marry with a false sense of what it is to love someone. True love has to be a commitment of one's will to the true good of another person. One has to be committed regardless of the actions of the one being loved.
It is the same with God. To love God with our minds, we have to be committed in our wills to do so, and take measures to ensure that our love for Him is nurtured. The progression goes like this: What we see and hear, enters our minds. If we entertain what enters our minds and allow it to rest there and grow, it affects our hearts, what we come to love. Once our hearts are affected, then our actions follow, because in matters under our control, we only do that which we love. If we are to love God with all of our minds, we have to be discerning in what we allow into our minds.
That there is a battle for the minds of this next generation should not be in doubt. Teens today are living in a culture that bombards them day and night with a worldview that is decidedly not only non-Christian, but in many cases anti-Christian. The sad part is that many youth in our churches are buying into it without even realizing that they are doing so. The proof that even "churched" teens have bought into the culture is born out in the way they dress, especially the young females, and in the music they listen to.
Nothing touches the soul like music, hence nothing will change one's worldview more than the music we feed our minds. I know this from my own experience as I listen to the lyrics of today's "oldies, but goldies", I can look back at how the songs swayed my worldview to believe that I could find ultimate fulfillment in the right romantic relationship. Only by learning some hard lessons did I find that only Christ can fill that longing for fulfillment that we all have in our hearts.
As to dress, no one is asking today's young females to wear burqas, but they seem to have accepted the idea that they have to dress like their favorite rock or movie star to be cool and accepted. I really don't believe they have any idea of the message they are sending to the males that they hang out with.
Every day, we are faced with a myriad of decisions and we have a choice. Do we honor Christ, or do we honor ourselves above Christ? Our thinking controls our heart which determines which choice we will make and if we are not discerning in our thinking, we will easily succumb to the pressures of the culture around us. Christianity is simple, but it is not easy.
Salkehatchie is a statewide summer service program that locates in various communities throughout the state of South Carolina for the purpose of improving the material lives of the poorest among us.
But there is also a tremendous spiritual aspect to the mission in that those who participate are there to bring the love of Christ to the home owners in a visible and verbal manner and the program is designed to impress upon the teens what it means to take one's Christianity seriously in becoming a true disciple of Christ.
In the nightly worship service at the Fairfield camp, the talks this year centered around the theme that "Christianity is simple, but is isn't easy" and at the Lake Murray camp, around the theme what it means to love God. Both camps used Mark 12:30, "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.", as their primary Scripture.
What troubles me about the next generation is that we are not training them to love God " with all of their mind". In one sense we have reduced Christianity to being just an emotional experience, and I, for one, think so-called contemporary worship has played a large part in this. We are not teaching our children that there is an intellectual base to not only Christianity, but to love.
While there is an emotional base to love, true love cannot be based solely on emotion. If emotion is the only component, then love will ebb and flow and eventually die. We can see this in the high divorce rate within the country as people marry with a false sense of what it is to love someone. True love has to be a commitment of one's will to the true good of another person. One has to be committed regardless of the actions of the one being loved.
It is the same with God. To love God with our minds, we have to be committed in our wills to do so, and take measures to ensure that our love for Him is nurtured. The progression goes like this: What we see and hear, enters our minds. If we entertain what enters our minds and allow it to rest there and grow, it affects our hearts, what we come to love. Once our hearts are affected, then our actions follow, because in matters under our control, we only do that which we love. If we are to love God with all of our minds, we have to be discerning in what we allow into our minds.
That there is a battle for the minds of this next generation should not be in doubt. Teens today are living in a culture that bombards them day and night with a worldview that is decidedly not only non-Christian, but in many cases anti-Christian. The sad part is that many youth in our churches are buying into it without even realizing that they are doing so. The proof that even "churched" teens have bought into the culture is born out in the way they dress, especially the young females, and in the music they listen to.
Nothing touches the soul like music, hence nothing will change one's worldview more than the music we feed our minds. I know this from my own experience as I listen to the lyrics of today's "oldies, but goldies", I can look back at how the songs swayed my worldview to believe that I could find ultimate fulfillment in the right romantic relationship. Only by learning some hard lessons did I find that only Christ can fill that longing for fulfillment that we all have in our hearts.
As to dress, no one is asking today's young females to wear burqas, but they seem to have accepted the idea that they have to dress like their favorite rock or movie star to be cool and accepted. I really don't believe they have any idea of the message they are sending to the males that they hang out with.
Every day, we are faced with a myriad of decisions and we have a choice. Do we honor Christ, or do we honor ourselves above Christ? Our thinking controls our heart which determines which choice we will make and if we are not discerning in our thinking, we will easily succumb to the pressures of the culture around us. Christianity is simple, but it is not easy.
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